I’ve been meaning to post this for months! Since a few of you requested it, I may as well start with the backlog here. This was a really fun dish to throw together. The saffron turmeric cake was an adaptation of a chocolate cake recipe, where Dave started by replacing the cocoa powder with turmeric and went on from there. It is intensely flavorful and moist and one of the most perfect cakes we’ve ever developed.

You can see from the photo how vividly red the inside of the cake is. It turns out that turmeric, a bright yellow root most commonly sold as a powder here in the U.S., turns red when it reacts with alkaline substances. In fact, the red dot traditionally worn by many Indian women in the center of the forehead is made by mixing powdered turmeric with lime (not the fruit!).

I can’t remember why we decided to pair it with the thyme brittle and the meyer lemon sorbet (I’m sure it made sense at the time, and it worked really well), but I definitely recall that we added thyme because we had read that meyer lemon contains one of the same flavor compounds as thyme.

Our few sets of our muffin pans are still stained red from making rounds of these cakes, but it was entirely worth it.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the winners of my CIA book giveaway! I used a random number generator to pick winners from the comments. The winners are Sandy, Kathryn, Vicki, Alison, Esme, and Red! Winners, please email me your addresses and I’ll have a book sent out to each of you pronto. Thanks to everyone for playing along!

Wow,
It’s good to catch up and see some of what you’ve been up to- love the spinning and all of your creativity from the post right before this one too. I am wowed by the idea of using Turmeric in place of cocoa- I would have never thought of it.
BTW I love the save the date cards- they’re so like you.
xox

Wow… So good! I thought this cake recipe was a little suspect with so little flour, but it’s actually awesome! Moist and full of flavor, the turmeric and saffron seem completely natural in this cake… And the taste lingers on the tongue long after the last bite. I’ll be dreaming in tones of yellow and red tonight. Thanks for this recipe!